I hone very many razors on average about 10 or 12 every week on a good week up to 20, I don't have the time or desire to mix naturals into my tried and tested progression of my synthetic lineup mostly Chosera with a Naniwa Snow White 8K and a Naniwa super stone 12K and finally a 20K Suehiro Gokumyo, 98% of what needs to be done happens on the 1K stone once you've mastered that stone the next level of refinement 3K, 5K, 8K, 12K, 20 is a very simple proccess, whenever I have a newbie around for a honing lesson I will spend most of our time talking about and using that 1K stone everthing else will eventually fall into place.:D